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Tbilisi: Smuggling scheme broken in FBI sting

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  • Tbilisi: Smuggling scheme broken in FBI sting

    The Messenger

    Friday, March 18, 2005, #049 (0823)

    Smuggling scheme broken in FBI sting

    Arrest of four Georgians in U.S. leads to calls for greater vigilance on
    Georgia's borders
    By James Phillips

    PHOTO
    Georgian Ioseb Kharabadze,
    pictured on Tuesday being led
    handcuffed by FBI agents in New
    York, is one of four Georgians
    accused of smuggling illegal arms
    into the United States

    Four Georgian nationals were among the eighteen people arrested in the
    United States on Tuesday on charges of conspiring to smuggle thousands of
    Russian weapons into the country.

    Georgians Ioseb Kharabadze, 52, Nikolai Nadirashvili, 25, Levan Chvelidze,
    28, and Vato Machitadze, 26, have all been arrested as members of an arms
    smuggling ring plotting to illegally import antitank weapons, surface-to-air
    missiles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and machine guns into the
    United States.

    The arrests followed a two-year sting operation in which an FBI informant
    who is a South African munitions expert posed as an arms buyer with ties to
    al-Qaeda.

    U.S. Attorney David Kelley said the operation had "disrupted a potential
    overseas pipeline for dangerous military weaponry to come into the hands of
    civilians or even terrorists."

    The FBI says the ring delivered eight automatic weapons to storage sheds in
    Los Angeles, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

    They also schemed to smuggle Russian weapons into the country, including
    rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Strela SA-7b surface-to-air
    shoulder-launched missiles.

    The ringleaders, Artur Solomonyan, 26, an Armenian who lives in New York,
    and Christiaan Dewet Spies, 33, a South African, were busted in a Battery
    Park City hotel as they prepared to leave for Eastern Europe to carry out
    the shipment of the arms, law enforcement officials said.

    They could face up to thirty years imprisonment if convicted, the New York
    Post reports.

    The sting operation involved the interception of some 15,000 phone calls. In
    one tapped call, Solomonyan says he has contacts with ex-Chechen military
    members, ex-KGB members and rogue members of the Russian military who could
    smuggle him weapons.

    In another phone call, he states that the weapons would be shipped from
    Georgia to Leninakan, a city in Armenia.

    The suggestion that the Russian arms would transit through Georgia prompted
    Minister of Foreign Affairs Salome Zourabichvili to call on Wednesday for
    Georgian control of the Roki tunnel connecting South and North Ossetia.

    The minister said she shared the opinion of the American special services
    that the attempt to smuggle weapons into the United States demonstrated the
    need for central Georgian control of the whole of its border, including the
    Roki tunnel.

    "Whether the weapons were imported from Georgia or transited through its
    territory I don't know," she said.

    "Georgia has repeatedly declared the necessity of establishing Georgian
    control over the Roki tunnel and other parts of its border. This is
    evidently necessary. The control is necessary for both Georgia and countries
    of possible destination," she stressed.

    Meanwhile, speaking on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Richard Miles
    stated, according to Black Sea Press, that, "Georgia, Armenia and other
    countries whose nationals are suspected of arms smuggling have expressed
    satisfaction with the work of the investigating bodies and are closely
    collaborating with us."

    The ambassador confirmed that "Georgian nationals Nikoloz Nadirashvili, Vato
    Machitadze,
    Iosif Kharabadze, and Levan Shvelidze have been detained," and added that
    Kharabadze could face up to five years imprisonment, while the others could
    receive fifteen year sentences.
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